Ashes - Book 1 Read online

  I really want to talk with her about that more. I think I’d be fantastic in black leather and carrying a whip. Hmmm… I wonder if Gage would let me spank him or stick a ball gag in his mouth. I laugh at the thought and wonder how anyone would like that kind of life. But… it might be fun to try it. I giggle — yes, I giggled, what the hell’s wrong with me — at the thought of leading Gage around on a leash.

  Speaking of Gage, I saw him for brief moments over the weekend as he carried furniture and endured us girls asking him to move it around until we liked where it went. He was patient, as always, but also seemed really distracted. He only stole one kiss, then he was gone. He had a date that night with a new girl he’d met only a couple of weeks ago.

  I’d fist bumped him and told him to wrap it up and have fun. But as he left, I’d felt a little pang. Pissed at myself for caring, I’d thrown myself back into organizing the stuff in Hannah’s kitchen and refused to think of it again.

  Tuesday finally rolls around and the center is closed and I get to sleep in. Well, I would have slept in if I’d remembered to shut my door. Instead, Onyx sounds the alarm by licking up one nostril and then so far into my ear, she must have touched my brain.

  “I’m up. I’m up,” I tell the big bundle of black fur, who gets in one more long lick up my cheek.

  Jealous, Ghost jumps up on the bed and then kneads a hole through my chest. I look up into his big blue eyes and listen to his loud purrs. I can almost see his eyes roll back in their sockets when I scratch the special spot on top of his head.

  Like Stephanie, I never had pets growing up. My mom is allergic. So having these two wonderfully frustrating creatures cuddled up next to me on the bed is comforting and very welcome. I love when Ken spends the night with Steph, because they always end up with me. Maybe I kinda, sorta leave my door open on purpose.

  Thirty minutes later, I’m rolling out of bed and staggering into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Then I pull on my running shorts and tennis shoes before hooking Onyx onto her leash. Five minutes later, I’m running down the street, being dragged this way and that by the curious mutt. She’s officially only a teenager in doggy years, but she already weighs fifty pounds. Since I barely weigh one hundred pounds on my fat days, she has no problem jerking me around.

  By the time I’m back to the house an hour later, I’m dripping in sweat. I slip off my shoes and socks, but dive into the pool fully dressed. The water feels wonderful and I’m once again grateful that nearly every house in Vegas, even the smallest one, has a pool.

  When I pull myself out after swimming a few laps, Stephanie is standing there with a towel tucked under her arm and two mugs of coffee. I grin at her. She’s such a nurturer, a caretaker at heart. I flick water in her face as a show of gratitude and we both sink onto lounge chairs to enjoy the rest of the morning.

  “I’m not sure about this,” Stephanie says for the seventeenth time today.

  “Stop being such a baby,” I tell her for the seventeenth time and pull her behind me through the doors of the salon and spa I prefer. We’re welcomed with glasses of champagne and I notice Steph tosses hers back in one swallow. I laugh and hand her mine. She tosses it back too.

  This is going to be fun.

  “Right this way,” the gorgeous blonde with perfectly coiffed hair tells us and leads us to the back rooms.

  I notice Stephanie furrowing her brow. I hook my arm through hers so she can’t run away and whisper, “They put us in the back so all the other customers don’t hear us scream.” She stops dead in her tracks and tries to turn on her heel. I laugh and drag her behind me. “I’m only kidding.” I’m really turning into a grade-A liar.

  In the small seating area of the waxing center, we sign the appropriate paperwork and wait our turn. Stephanie scratches her legs and I can see the light blonde hair poking out from them. She’d been appalled when I’d told her she couldn’t shave anything, anywhere, because the wax needed something to cling to.

  “Miss Vonnegut, this way please,” a tall, leggy brunette says to Steph. My friend slowly rises from her chair like she’s one hundred years old. I give her a little push in the other woman’s direction.

  Then it’s my turn and I’m escorted to a room next to Steph’s and I strip down and lie on the table. I’ve done this every six weeks for the past couple years. It hurts like hell, but the rewards are worth the hour of pain. I flashback to the first time I’d done it and feel a moment of sympathy for my friend.

  My waxer isn’t a chatterer, thank goodness, so I try to relax and close my eyes.

  Riiip. I flinch when the first strip is torn off, but settle back into my meditation. My eyes pop open when next door I hear a scream, then, “Holy mother of God” wafts clearly through the thin walls. I laugh and feel immediately bad. A moment later, Steph cries out, “Shit!” Then, a moment later, “I’m done. I want to stop.”

  I pick up my phone and face-time her. On the second ring, her face appears on my screen. “I hate you Beth Richards. You are the worst person on earth. You suck as a human being and a friend,” she snarls in one breath into her phone.

  Her face is red and her eyes are watering. I try so hard not to laugh, but I can’t help it.

  I hear a riiiip, and Stephanie screams, the sound coming through the walls and also my phone’s speakers. She growls. Growls. She looks like a feral beast trapped on a padded table.

  “Listen to me,” I say to her when I’m finally able to talk. “Breathe. In and out. In and out. Find your happy place.”

  On my screen, I watch her nostrils flare in her attempts to breathe. She squeaks, “Oh no” then riiip. A string of curse words come from her lips.

  Off to the side, I hear the waxer say to her, “Okay, that has the exterior, open your legs wide and let me get the lips.”

  Stephanie’s mouth trembles but apparently she does what she’d been told because a minute later, her eyes roll back into her head and small gurgling noises come from her throat.

  “One more side,” the waxer says, her voice a cheerful lilt.

  Steph sticks a finger in her mouth and bites down. Riiip. Oh dear heavens, she about bit her finger off.

  She wipes her hand across her face and smiles the tiniest bit into the phone. “I did it.” I don’t have the heart to tell her what comes next.

  “Please turn over on your hands and knees so I can get your bottom.”

  Steph’s face morphs into pure horror.

  “You can do it,” I encourage her and she snarls at me. But … she puts the phone down and for a moment, all I can see is ceiling, then her face appears again, this time looking down into the phone, her hair hanging down in damp strands on either side of her face.

  “We’ll go eat at your favorite restaurant after this,” I promise.

  She mouths something. I think it was “fuck you” but I’m not sure.

  Riiip. Everything goes dark as she falls down on the phone, howling in pain.

  “One more side,” says the cheerful waxer and the screen grows brighter as Steph lifts herself back onto her hands. She’s panting like a dog. I tell her to breathe because I’m worried she’ll pass out.

  A tear drops onto her screen and now her image is blurry. “We’ll get ice cream and eat the entire thing and watch chick flicks,” I say.

  Riiip. She wails, the most pitiful sound I’ve ever heard and collapses on the phone again. My own waxer has her hands over her mouth, trying hard not to laugh out loud. Each time I meet her eyes, I feel like I’m going to explode.

  When I hear Steph’s waxer say, “You can turn over now. It’s time to do your legs and underarms” I click off my phone but can still hear Stephanie’s loud “Noooooooo” through the wall.

  An hour later, I’m sitting in the little waiting area, when the door opens and Steph’s waxer comes out. She stage whispers, “You might want to run.” I clamp my hand over my mouth and she stage whispers again. “Seriously.”

  Five minutes later, a very rumpled Stephanie opens t
he door. She’s walking with her legs wide apart and her hair is plastered against her forehead and cheeks. I stand up, wondering if maybe the waxer was right and I should bolt, but Stephanie pulls her shoulders back and waddles to the door, tossing over her shoulder, “That wasn’t so bad.”

  Two hours later, we’re back home after the wonderful dinner I promised her. We stopped by the salon first, to have her hair blown out and the mascara washed away from her face.

  It had taken her a good thirty minutes to find the humor in the situation, then she finally said, “I can’t believe anyone would do that more than once.”

  I promise her that the smoothness and the not needing to shave for six weeks would be worth it, but she glares at me with doubt.

  “Plus, Ken’s going to love it.” I wiggle my eyes at her and she looks at me in horror.

  “He’ll love it next week when the skin has grown back!” Then she’d waddled off to the kitchen.

  I’m sitting on the couch, flipping through channels, when she comes into the living room, her big green eyes shiny with unshed tears.

  I jump up. “What’s wrong?”

  Her bottom lip trembles. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Number one or number two?” I ask her, keeping my face serious.

  “Two.” She says the word in a long whine. Then she crosses her legs and I can tell she’s squeezing her butt cheeks tightly together, as if willing the poop to stay put.

  I run to my bedroom and grab a box of baby wipes I keep there for quick post sex clean-ups. I thrust them at her. “Use these. Good luck.”

  She looks at me like a person facing the gallows and turns on her heel, waddle walking to the bathroom.

  I sink to the floor, covering my mouth with both hands and am immediately attacked by the dog and cat.

  First there’s a groan, then a sob emanating through the bathroom door. I yell, “You can do it!”

  She calls me every name in her very long repertoire of bad words. She’s learned a lot of them since hooking up with Ken. I’m pretty impressed.

  The toilet flushes, the sink faucet comes on and I try, really try to get up and make a run for it. But Onyx is on my stomach and Ghost is playing with my hair and I’ve laughed so hard my bones feel like they won’t pick me up.

  So I’m lying on the floor when the bathroom door opens and a sweaty Stephanie emerges. She doesn’t look at me, just lifts her nose in the air and waddles to her bedroom, slamming the door.

  Chapter 9 - Gage

  The range is almost deserted and I move to the far end. I notice Joe, the manager, is moving targets for a couple of guys with rifles. He waves at me and points to Ken. I motion him over.

  “Joe, this is my buddy, Ken. He’s learning to shoot.”

  The two shake hands and then he squints at me, the wrinkles on his leathery face coming alive. “What did you bring today? I hope you didn’t bring the cannon; I can hardly control that.”

  I shake my head. “I brought the 9 mm and the .22.” I open the case and hand Ken the yellow shooting glasses and some earplugs.

  Joe grabs the guns and puts them on the table, barrels pointed down range. “Ken, you ever shoot before?”

  Ken turns slightly red. “I, uh, well, to be honest. No.”

  Joe slaps his shoulder. “Everyone starts somewhere. Don’t feel bad.”

  Ken glances at me as Joe continues. “Make sure you explain the rules here and go over gun safety. I trust you, but I’ll be checking up on you both.”

  I’ve always loved the feel and precision of a firearm. I place both hands on the metal for proper control and raise the gun to shoulder level. “You’ve seen the movies,” I begin and glance over at Ken. “They hold the gun sideways with one hand, like this.” Ken nods, still looking wary, but a little more curious. “That’s the movies. This is real life. You want control, not show. A slow squeeze.”

  The first round was slightly off center, but still pretty damn close. “Not bad for the first round in a few weeks.” I squeeze off another and watch the center of the target widen.

  Three more rounds and the entire center is punched out.

  Ken stares at the target and then back at me. “How’d you learn to shoot like that? I honestly thought it was luck when those thugs were after us, and as the saying goes, better lucky than good.”

  I step back to reload. “I didn’t always want to be a firefighter,” I tell him. “In fact, that wasn’t even on my radar until a few years ago. I wanted to be an army ranger or in Delta Force or some other special ops.”

  He cocks his head to the side. “No shit? I never even had a clue you wanted to join the military. I guess I just thought you always wanted to be a firefighter. What made you change?”

  I put down the 9 mm on the table. “It’s kind of a long story and I want you to do some shooting.”

  “Just give me the short version. I’m curious.”

  “My parents got divorced when I was fourteen and I lived with my mother. I was always tall, but lanky. I wanted to be like my cousin, the football player, but I ended up with a swimmer’s body, so the opponents pushed me all over the place. I was lifting weights every day. I wanted to gain weight, so I was drinking protein drinks by the quart. I remember watching a movie on TV about the Rangers. Those guys were all buff and I decided to join the army. I went to the recruiter – my mom still doesn’t know about that – and he gave me some advice. Of course I was too young to join anyway, but I had laser focus.

  “I wasn’t so worried about bulking up huge. I would run in the hills around my house. I made my own obstacle course and one of my friends had a bunch of guns. His dad taught us about gun safety and, as crazy as it seemed, just let us go out and shoot. We even reloaded our own bullets and I learned about hunting and shooting. We would spend every hour shooting or pretending we were Rangers.”

  Ken removes his goggles and hangs them on his shirt. “I sense something coming up.”

  “No, not really. Of course, as time went on, other things came up, but basically I stuck with it. I hated my step-dad and I couldn’t graduate fast enough. I wanted out of my house and made plans with my buddy to move in together. He had the firefighter bug, but still loved shooting and losing ourselves in the hills.”

  Joe walks up and grabs the gun. “Ken, is Gage telling tall tales again?”

  Ken laughs. “You know Gage better than I thought. My fault, I egged him on.”

  Joe mock glares at him. “Oh, so you were trying to distract him, huh. You aren’t getting out of here today until you are comfortable shooting. You don’t have to go buy a gun, but I want you to at least learn to be safe and be able to protect yourself. I’ll be back after Gage finishes his old wives’ tale.”

  I look at Ken, trying to deflect the story. “How about you? When did you decide to become a firefighter?”

  He shakes his head. “Another day, Gage. Now finish, I don’t really want to be here all day. I have some ‘business’ with Steph, if you know what I mean.” He smirks at me.

  “You know you can’t do any ‘business’ with her for at least twenty-four hours, right?”

  He looks at me in disbelief. “You shitting me?”

  “Nope. Google it if you don’t believe me.”

  The poor guy looks crestfallen. I laugh and continue my story. “Well, after I graduated, I moved in with my buddy, Paul. I decided to wait a year to join the army. I wanted to have a little freedom. Paul took me to the training center a couple of times while he was taking some classes to get him ready for training. He ended up not making the cut, but I realized I loved the adrenaline rush and decided to join. The rest is history.”

  Ken scratches his chin. “That can’t be it. How could you be so committed to the army and then become a firefighter? Something’s fishy.”

  I start to load some bullets into the magazine for Ken to use. “I don’t think it was a split-second decision. It more or less evolved. Like I told you, Paul knew he wanted to be a firefighter for many years a
nd we also practiced some of that stuff on our outings in the hills. One time when we were both fifteen, we hitched a ride to Carlsbad with Paul’s older sister, Paulette. She was in college and was meeting a couple of her friends for a few days of partying at the beach. She didn’t want us to go, but we told her we wouldn’t bug her. Whoa, she was hot.”

  Ken takes a seat on the chair off to the side. “This is getting interesting. Even if it’s bullshit, I want to hear it.”

  I grin and polish the fingerprints off the gun with my shirt. “It isn’t bullshit, I swear. You already know what happened. I became a fireman. The end. Let’s just get to shooting.” I push the magazine into the gun.

  Ken holds up a hand and settles back in his chair. “You aren’t getting off that easy. What does going to the beach have to do with becoming a firefighter?”

  I lift a shoulder. “Nothing, I guess. Thinking about Paul made me think about Paulette, which made me think of that trip. Her friend was my first. Actually, they were my first. She had more than one friend.”

  Ken raised an eyebrow. “No shit?”

  I raised one back. “No shit. But it was more than being laid. I kinda grew up. Started looking for direction. Looking back, it really changed my life.”

  “I bet,” he laughs. “A night with two girls … older girls at that. Every boy’s dream, right?”

  “I’ve never told anyone this, not even Beth.”

  “Beth? Why would you tell her? You keep telling me she’s just a fuck buddy.”

  I shrug him off and go back to the story. “The girls — women — were drinking and offered me some. I’d had some beers before, but this was vodka and juice. I got pretty drunk and Paulette’s friends were doing everything but jacking me off on the sand. Rubbing my body, both laying on my stomach. I was feeling them out while they were lying beside me. I’m sure Paulette could see it all, but she ignored them.”